Monday, 24 December 2012

Tragedy at Christmas

It is a well known fact
that Santa Claus maintains lists of who has been naughty and who has been nice;
presents if you're on the nice list, a lump of coal if you're on the naughty
list.People such as myself who may not
have necessarily been paragons of virtue should be extremely concerned at this
time of year.I should be concerned, but
I'm not.Yours truly works in the field
of IT and knows just a thing or two about the rudiments of ethical hacking,
never mind a whole lot more about unethical hacking.Let's just say that security is not
all it might be as far as Santa’s computer systems are concerned and that any
enterprising young (ok, not so young) chap with the slightest whim to access
the naughty & nice lists could do so quite easily.Thus it is that every year I can go to bed on
Christmas Eve secure in the knowledge that I am on Santa's nice list, for the
perfectly good reason that I have put myself there.These days I rarely content myself with just
that of course, some years ago I moved Mrs Claus onto the naughty list and was
amused to discover that Santa had been spotted on Boxing Day sporting a black
eye.This Christmas Eve, it came to pass
that Santa paid me a visit using the nearest chimney to where I happened to be,
and because I had booked myself on for the Santa Specials, that happened to be
the rather nice copper capped chimney of 7903, Foremarke Hall. There were two trains out, the first (2807) crewed
by George, Tina, Ben & Dan, the second (7903) by Adrian, Steve, Matt &
myself.Whilst hacking into Santa's
naughty and nice lists, I had taken the liberty of placing George, Tina, Ben
& Dan onto the naughty list.... in fact I was amused to discover that one
of them was already there. Here is a rather blurry picture of them as our trains crossed later in the day at Gotherington:

Dan, Ben,George & Tina

Unfortunately Santa’s
naughty list doesn’t make mention of the transgressions that get you there, but
a quick hack into his email account (password of ‘rudolph’ wasn’t exactly tough
to guess) and suddenly I knew what the miscreant on the other footplate had
done and who had grassed on them. I’ll be expecting a couple of very well
stuffed brown envelopes to come my way in the next few days if my silence on
the matter is to be maintained!

Anyway, unbeknown to me
Santa was coming down the chimney of Foremarke Hall just as we were in the
process of lighting her up. Wet wood from the wood store and damp lighting up
rags meant that extreme methods of initiating combustion had to be employed
with unforeseen and unfortunate consequences. This still taken from CCTV
footage records the actual moment that Santa started clambering down the
chimney.

Santa about to enter Foremarke Hall's chimney

The tragedy that occurred
soon afterwards has subsequently been immortalised in the words of a song.I should warn readers of a nervous
disposition or who are reading this in the presence of young children, that the
song’s lyrics contain relatively graphic details of the events that unfolded and
whilst probably safe for work might cause alarm or distress to youngsters.

Whilst not wishing to appear to advertise other musical parodies by the duo
that recorded that, I feel obliged to point out that many other works of theirs
are definitely not safe for work, in fact I can guarantee that there is something
in there to offend everybody; miners as well as minors.You have been warned!

The cleanup afterwards was not inconsiderable
and the pressures of meeting the timetable meant that not quite all of the job
was finished before we set off.

Oops!

Steve Burnett was caught cooking some extremely tasty bacon & sausages on the shovel later in the day, was this a coincidence?

Steve Burnett, a wizard on the shovel in more ways than one.

I would like to thank Adrian (twice), Paul & Steve for inviting me along with them yesterday & today and special thanks to Ed (Santa) Brooks for being such a good sport, George (Boots) Forrest & the Photoshop fairy.

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